Just Angelina
by Blonde Pickle Mule
Summary: In the aftermath of the Battle of Hogwarts, Angelina sits by the Gryffindor Fire and reflects on the biggest hole in her life.


**OhMiGosh I just have to take a moment here to thank my new AMAZING beta Ariana Ethaitrius! She's done an awesome job editing this for me.**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing from the Harry Potter universe and never will *sob sob* (Oops, I just realised a couple of my other one shots are missing one of these *slaps self*)**

* * *

I sat in front of the Gryffindor fire, the dying embers reflecting on my tear-streaked face. The squashy armchair was just as it had always been- comfortable and worn from years. The Gryffindor common room was unchanged, looking exactly like it had when I first walked in here, 9 years ago. But everything else had changed. Nothing was the same.

Even with the dorm doors still slightly ajar and the gobstones club set out in one corner, it wasn't the same. Because just outside that door, there was death and destruction. Lives had been lost, people destroyed, futures ruined. Right now the Common Room was my sanctuary, because here at least I could pretend that nothing was wrong and that I was back at school in the years where everything had been fine. As long as I was in here, I wouldn't be forced to cry more tears that I didn't have over the bodies of people I once knew.  
Memories flickered in front of my blank eyes as I remembered everything that had happened in this room. The first years, walking in for the first time, Neville Longbottom hopping through the portrait hole with his legs jinxed together. The legendary party when we won the Quidditch cup for Oliver, late night homework for my OWLs. Then there were also the memories that were almost too painful to think about. The twins used to sit right on that sofa, heads bent together with some new crazy idea to drive authority mad. Their identical grins from ear to ear. I was one of the few that could sometimes tell them apart, being Fred's girlfriend.

But now they weren't "the twins" anymore, there wasn't even a "they". There was just George. All by himself and most likely feeling like half of him was gone. I couldn't even come to terms with it. Fred couldn't be...gone. It was impossible, the twins being seperated. They were the very meaning of light, so full of life and happiness it always put a smile on people's faces, It was just wrong for one of them to be dead. Dead didn't even come into their vocabulary.

The room was becoming slightly cold now and I grabbed a lone blanket off the ground, drawing it round my heaving shoulders as I tried to repress my sobs. It wasn't fair. Fred and I should have had such happy lives together. We'd always known that each other was "it" and we'd always been waiting for the day that the official "us" could begin.

But it wouldn't now.

We wouldn't have lots of red-haired children. We wouldn't grow old together. There wasn't a "Fred and Angelina" anymore. Only "Angelina", and Angelina didn't sound right. Without the Fred tacked on the beginning it didn't sound like my name. Not now. Not ever.

Fred was it- my world, my soul mate. I couldn't say the other half of course- that's where George came in, but I could say that we clicked better than anyone else did. Even when I was furious at him for being kicked off the team back in 7th year, we'd still clicked in perfect unison with each other. Now there was just a world of emptiness stretching before me with no seeable way out of it. I didn't want to live, didn't want to think. There wasn't any point anymore.

And not only Fred had died, although it was hard to think past it. There were so many lives that had ended. Remus Lupin, his wife Tonks...little Colin Creevy...just a few of the many sightless eyes that stared up at the sky in the great hall. They'd left behind so much- Lupin and Tonks had left their son, Colin his little brother who when I last saw him, was hysterical.

My parents were gone as well. Not in the fight, but in raids at the Ministry and was all I'd had left, and now I had nothing. Sure I might have George, but now we were kind of a curse in the other's eyes. Each of us had that bit of Fred in us that made it almost impossible for the other to look at them. It made it hard to look in the mirror every morning, because you'd just notice these little bits of Fred there, and then you'd remember him and everything he stood for. George just reminded me of the Husband I never got, and looking into my face, I think that George just sees the Half of him that was perminantly missing.

It was only after he saw me that he cried at all. First off it was just him kneeling beside Fred's head, staring blankly at the wide chocolate eyes I'd grown to love and the wide smile that still held the traces of humor round it. But when I came over...he sort of sagged into himself with deep sobs that wracked his body.  
My own tears were flowing as I stared at the still twin and then over at the moving twin. George and I had thrown ourselves at the other, clinging to each other and crying so hard we were both trembling. I was crying so hard I could barely breathe and that night I didn't sleep at all.

It's a day later, and I'm still empty, still alone. I'm still waiting for the pain to at least fade slightly, but in my heart I know that it  
won't. I'll never be able to go back to "Just Angelina."

Because "Just Angelina" doesn't exist any more.


End file.
